Sunday Funnies: Sotomayor Derangement Syndrome

How Pharma and Insurance intend to kill the public option

Robert Reich:

I'ved poked around Washington today, talking with friends on the Hill who confirm the worst: Big Pharma and Big Insurance are gaining ground in their campaign to kill the public option in the emerging health care bill.

You know why, of course. They don't want a public option that would compete with private insurers and use its bargaining power to negotiate better rates with drug companies. They argue that would be unfair. Unfair? Unfair to give more people better health care at lower cost? To Pharma and Insurance, "unfair" is anything that undermines their profits.

So they're pulling out all the stops -- pushing Democrats and a handful of so-called "moderate" Republicans who say they're in favor of a public option to support legislation that would include it in name only. One of their proposals is to break up the public option into small pieces under multiple regional third-party administrators that would have little or no bargaining leverage. A second is to give the public option to the states where Big Pharma and Big Insurance can easily buy off legislators and officials, as they've been doing for years. A third is bind the public plan to the same rules private insurers have already wangled, thereby making it impossible for the public plan to put competitive pressure on the insurers.

That sorry-ass Max Baucus is behind this. The Democrats are more dishonest than the Republicans in this regard; at least the GOP is straight-up about their intentions. Mitch McConnell: "The key to a bipartisan bill is to not have a government plan in the bill, no matter what it's called ... When I say no government plan, I mean no government plan. Not something described some other way, not something that gets us to the same place by indirection. No government plan." The Blue Dogs will put together a Potempkin bill which looks like a public option, but as a practical matter won't be -- their modus operandi in other policy matters.

All this will be decided within days or weeks. And once those who want to kill the public option without their fingerprints on the murder weapon begin to agree on a proposal -- Snowe's "trigger" or any other -- the public option will be very hard to revive. The White House must now insist on a genuine public option. And you, dear reader, must insist as well.

This is it, folks. The concrete is being mixed and about to be poured. And after it's poured and hardens, universal health care will be with us for years to come in whatever form it now takes. Let your representative and senators know you want a public option without conditions or triggers -- one that gives the public insurer bargaining leverage over drug companies, and pushes insurers to do what they've promised to do. Don't wait until the concrete hardens and we've lost this battle.

We remain silent at our peril.

A smart electricity grid

Catching up on posting with some excerpts of things found of interest:

More than a century after Edison invented a reliable light bulb, the nation's electricity distribution system, an aging spider web of power lines, is poised to move into the digital age.

The "smart grid" has become the buzz of the electric power industry, at the White House and among members of Congress. President Barack Obama says it's essential to boost development of wind and solar power, get people to use less energy and to tackle climate change.

What smart grid visionaries see coming are home thermostats and appliances that adjust automatically depending on the cost of power; where a water heater may get juice from a neighbor's rooftop solar panel; and where on a scorching hot day a plug-in hybrid electric car charges one minute and the next sends electricity back to the grid to help head off a brownout

It is where utilities get instant feedback on a transformer outage, shift easily among energy sources, integrating wind and solar energy with electricity from coal-burning power plants, and go into homes and businesses to automatically adjust power use based on prearranged agreements.

"It's the marriage of information technology and automation technology with the existing electricity network. This is the energy Internet," said Bob Gilligan, vice president for transmission at GE Energy, which is aggressively pursuing smart grid development. "There are going to be applications 10 years from now that you and I have no idea that we're going to want or need or think are essential to our lives."

Hundreds of technology companies and almost every major electric utility company see smart grid as the future. That interest got a boost with the availability of $4.5 billion in federal economic recovery money for smart grid technology.

But smart grid won't be cheap; cost estimates run as high as $75 billion. Who's going to pay the bill? Will consumers get the payback they are promised? Might "smart meters" be too intrusive? Could an end-to-end computerization of the grid increase the risk of cyberattacks?

More here.

Sunday Funnies

Regular posting to resume eventually.

Rick Santorum's marriage counseling

A "Douchebag" finalist for certain:



And because you wouldn't believe it if I didn't repeat it, here's a partial transcript:

Number one, I think it's great that the president has a date night with his wife. He's a role model. He's a role model in particular, whether he likes it or not, in the African-American community.

And you have an African-American community, particularly in the poor inner city areas, we're looking at out of wedlock birthrates in three quarters to 75 percent (sic) of children being born out of wedlock. Marriage is an institution that's a bridge too far for too many African-American woman and is not desirable among African-American males.

That particular stereotype is a few centuries old: that black men are sexually deviant and irresponsible and thus to blame for the existence of the black underclass -- as opposed to, say, blatant structural racism, the lack of support for all poor people (black, white, red, men, women, children), a legacy of violence and discrimination, etc., etc.

But marriage is an institution that is "not desirable" for African-American men? Really?

Nice to know that social conservatives can profoundly embarrass themselves and the GOP even when talking about something as trivial as the Obama's date night.

Who is capable of topping that this week? It's only Wednesday ...

The Weekly Wrangle

This week from the Texas Progressive Alliance blogs, emission from drilling are more than cars and airports, women are running things in Denton County, Liberty University Democrats lose their recognition, President Obama's political coalition leaves out the far-right and the poor, and much more.

This week’s round-up was compiled by Teddy from Left of College Station.

John Coby at Bay Area Houston notes that Rick Perry signed a bill to stop electricity deregulation in East Texas while we poor saps continue to be screwed with high electricity rates.

On Bluedaze: Barnett Shale operators continued to endanger public health and safety by ignoring the peer-reviewed study that showed emission from drilling were more than all the cars and airports in the DFW area. Now the TCEQ data supports the findings. Smog-forming nitrogen oxides and volatile organic emissions for the entire 19-counties of the Barnett Shale area are approximately 200 tons per day.

Jesus Hussein Christ, PDiddie at Brains and Eggs agrees with John Cornyn.

Castle Hills Democrats proclaims that, in Denton County, "The Women Are Running Things Now".

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme notes that Republican ambition is messing with Perry, Hutchison and Cornyn. Who cares about Hispanic or female voters?

DosCentavos is no longer a Blogspot blog but now at DosCentavos.net, exclusively!

WCNews at Eye On Williamson points out the important issues that are being neglected as the 81st Legislative Session winds down: Lack of leadership in Texas is painfully obvious.

Teddy at Left of College Station writes about the sexist and racist attacks by the usual conservative voices on President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, and on Liberty University’s decision to no longer recognize the College Democrats as an official student organization because of their endorsement of pro-choice and pro-gay rights candidates.

McBlogger takes another look at the dump near Andrews after he finds out it'll be taking not just radioactive waste, but PCB saturated dirt from the Hudson Valley. In New York.

Off the Kuff takes a look at a wrench in the 2010 GOP gubernatorial primary named Leo Berman.

At Texas Kaos, Lightseeker asks the question: What do the powerful do when reform is eminent? (Hint, there's a lotta money to be made in fake reforms ...)

Neil at Texas Liberal says that President Obama's political coalition leaves out the far-right and and the most poor. Neil also reports that he will be master of ceremonies at a huge punk rock blast in Cincinnati this coming August 15.

BossKitty at TruthHugger is appalled at the short-sighted vision of of Texas politicians. If you donate to their campaign, you are free to destroy the land, air and water of a great state. You can have the blessings of all the state and federal agencies you need to pull off a hazardous trick. It's all posted in Rick Perry and Friends Welcome Toxic Burritos.

General Motors quietly slips into BK

A little later today:

General Motors Corp., the world’s largest automaker for 77 years, will file for bankruptcy today, a landmark for an industry that defined American economic might. The filing, which GM executives said last year wouldn’t happen, marks the plunge of a company that used to make more than half the cars bought in the U.S., including the Corvette, the Cadillac and the Pontiac GTO.

Word has been leaking out since last week to soften the blow to the American psyche. From $40 a share to 75 cents over the past two years.

The “new GM” will get $30.1 billion in bankruptcy financing from the government, and the Treasury “does not anticipate providing any additional assistance” after that, the Obama administration said Sunday in a statement. The federal government will have a 60 percent equity stake in the retooled automaker, and 12 percent will be held by the Canadian government, which is lending $9.5 billion to the company.

Everybody takes a hit:

The United Auto Workers’ health trust fund for retirees, which is owed $20 billion by GM, will be replaced by a new entity that will own 17.5 percent of the new company with warrants to purchase an additional 2.5 percent. Bondholders and other creditors would get a 10 percent stake in the new GM, with warrants for an additional 15 percent, in exchange for $27.1 billion unsecured debt.

Administration officials said GM will have to comply with executive compensation limits the Treasury announced in February for financial institutions that receive more than $500 million in federal funds, as well as the so-called Dodd Amendment. The provision is named after Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat, who attached the pay restrictions to the $787 billion economic stimulus bill Congress passed on Feb. 13.

Those restrictions place a $500,000 salary cap on the top five executives at banks, and the 20 most highly paid employees below them, and require them to forgo cash bonuses.

Good luck to a leaner, meaner General Bull Moose.

Freak Right assassinates clinic physician

If this guy weren't Christian and Caucasian and Kansan, we would be calling him a terrorist and all of his friends a terror cell:

The suspect in custody for the slaying of Wichita abortion doctor George Tiller was a member of an anti-government group in the 1990s and a staunch opponent of abortion.

Scott P. Roeder, 51, of Merriam, Kan., a Kansas City suburb, was arrested on Interstate 35 near Gardner in suburban Johnson County, Kan., about three hours after the shooting. Tiller was shot to death around 10 a.m. inside Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita.

In the rear window of the 1993 blue Ford Taurus that he was driving was a red rose, a symbol often used by abortion opponents. On the rear of his car was a Christian fish symbol with the word "Jesus" inside.

Those who know Roeder said he believed that killing abortion doctors was an act of justifiable homicide.

Ah, another Army of God lemming. Dr. Tiller was killed as he handed out programs at the conclusion of his church's service.

"I know that he believed in justifiable homicide," said Regina Dinwiddie, a Kansas City anti-abortion activist who made headlines in 1995 when she was ordered by a federal judge to stop using a bullhorn within 500 feet of any abortion clinic. "I know he very strongly believed that abortion was murder and that you ought to defend the little ones, both born and unborn."

Dinwiddie said she met Roeder while picketing outside the Kansas City Planned Parenthood clinic in 1996. Roeder walked into the clinic and asked to see the doctor, Robert Crist, she said.

"Robert Crist came out and he stared at him for approximately 45 seconds," she said. "Then [Roeder] said, 'I've seen you now.' Then he turned his back and walked away, and they were scared to death. On the way out, he gave me a great big hug and he said, 'I've seen you in the newspaper. I just love what you're doing.'"

Hunter:

Isn't that lovely. Make an obvious threat to a doctor, then enjoy a hug with a fellow "activist". Go visit someone who went to prison for shooting Dr. Tiller, and just happen to meet his future killer.

What a tight little goddamn family they have. I wonder how many of the people issuing statements condemning this murder have shaken this guy's hand or exchanged a "great big hug" with this bomb-making, government-hating anti-abortion terrorist.

Kind of tempted to suspend my objection to the death penalty in this case, but if I did that would make me as barbaric as them. So let's settle for prosecution of Roeder for murder in the first and all of his "sympathizers" for conspiracy under federal terrorism legislation.

If they are not punished, then their sleeper cells all across the nation will be emboldened to strike again.

Jesus Hussein Christ, I agree with John Cornyn

"I think it's terrible... This is not the kind of tone any of us want to set when it comes to performing our constitutional responsibilities of advise and consent."

Cornyn dismissed Limbaugh and Gingrich, adding: "Neither one of these men are elected Republican officials. I just don't think it's appropriate. I certainly don't endorse it. I think it's wrong."

Corndog, whose charge this cycle includes getting more Republicans elected to the Senate, is awake and smelling the coffee. The RNC (Rush, Newt, Cheney) is demonstrating high douchebaggery with every broadcast utterance for the past week, but it's all for naught and Cornyn knows it. The Grand Obsolete Party cannot so much as muster a filibuster in the Senate, nor can they allow Sotomayor to sail to confirmation without looking flaccid. So they are boxed in with their base, struggling to placate the radicals who are shrinking the party.

The squeals of "racist" drive more independents and swing voters away in droves. The lesser insults are doing the same thing. The most hilarious assertion flung from the herd of Irrelephants came from former Bush brain Karl Rove, who knows people who went to Yale and Harvard who weren't all that smart, nyuck nyuck. Rove and Limbaugh -- neither of whom could complete a baccalaureate program at second-rate colleges -- calling a Harvard Phi Beta Kappa unintelligent has to be as high as hypocrisy can stretch.

But I bet they can beat that next week.

Anyway, kudos to Cornyn for speaking out against the unelected leadership of his party and calling for civility in the consideration of Judge Sotomayor's appointment to the SCOTUS. And let's see If Limbaugh bashes him on the radio on Monday.

Sunday Funnies